Friday, March 14, 2014

It's a video the cynical person is predisposed to hate: People dancing to Pharrell's ubiquitous hit "Happy" on the streets of Washington.

But something about it — the sunny looks on the dancers' faces, the use of locations off the National Mall — made it undeniably, well, great. As DCist commenter Fugitive Vizsla said, "This is commenter kryptonite, I can't even find mean things to say about the tourists. Ugh."

The production company behind the video, Ward 8 Studios, is based out of The Hive 2.0 in Anacostia. Alex Cox, who recently founded the company with his college roommate Omid Heidari and girlfriend Susan Moon, says the video "has no agenda," adding they didn't make it thinking it would get a lot of views. (It's been seen over 21,000 times, as of today.) "We used it as a way to test the waters," he says. "Would people be receptive to something more in the joyful category?"